I'm Awfully Fond of You
by Alixtii
Summary: Bobby has to choose between Rogue and a rubber ducky. Somehow, he still almost manages to choose wrong. Luckily, Kitty's there to set him straight.


**I'm Awfully Fond of You**

Bobby felt the heat of the flames against his skin as he rushed to lower the temperature in the offending area as quickly as he could. "You didn't tell me it breathed fire," he shouted to Kitty.

She shot a mischievous grin back at him as she phased through a giant rubbery wing. "I wanted it to be a surprise."

Bobby picked up an icicle and threw it against their rampaging attacker and watched as it just bounced off the creature's rubber skin. "You are a sick, sick girl."

Kitty just kept on grinning. "I try my best," she said. "I have to keep myself occupied somehow while you and Rogue are off smooching." She grabbed onto the rubber duck's leg and held tight as it tried to shake her free. "Or have you gotten past kissing already?"

"I don't know," said Bobby, which wasn't quite right. He knew whether they had gotten past kissing (awkward groping totally counted, right?). "I mean, I can finally touch her now and I just feel like she's pulling away."

"Well, it has to be tough," Kitty said as she tried to jump on the rubber duck's back. "I mean, losing her powers, not being an X-Man anymore."

"Well, she wanted it," Bobby said. "I didn't ask her to do it."

"She's allowed to want it."

"Well, now she has it," said Bobby as he threw punch after punch at the giant duck's side, not caring that each time the rubber simply bounced back undamaged. "She's just like everybody else now."

"Come on," Kitty said. "You know that's not fair."

And Bobby did know that Kitty was right, of course. It wasn't fair, and Rogue wasn't like everyone, even without her powers. And it wasn't just the white streak in her hair which even as a human still gave testimony to her experiences with Magneto on Liberty Island. Her smile wasn't like everybody else's smile. The way she said Bobby's name wasn't the way everyone else said it. She was his friend, his girlfriend, maybe one day his lover.

"I feel like that she wants something from me, like now that I can touch her, that's supposed to change something. But if she won't even let me touch her, I'm not sure what the difference is."

Kitty tapped a button on the remote at her side, and the simulation froze in place around them. "You really don't understand girls at all, do you?"

Bobby suddenly felt it would be easier to be fighting the giant fire-breathing rubber duck. "Should I?"

Kitty just shook her head. "Go find your girlfriend right now, Robert Drake, and tell you that love her. Buy her a gift. Do _something_."

"But--" Bobby gestured around him inarticulately.

"The giant rubber duck will still be here tomorrow," said Kitty. She hit another button on the remote and the rubber duck disappeared, as did their surroundings as the Danger Room reverted to its native state. "Now go."

"But--"

"Do you love her?"

That one was easy. "I really do."

"Then why are you still here with me?"

* * *

Rogue paused in front of the door to her dorm room. She could see light from under the door: not the bright light of her desk lamp or her ceiling light, but a soft, flickering light. She opened her door slowly, uncertain who or what she would find inside.

It was Bobby, who was sitting in her desk chair grinning wildly. He had cleared off her desk, and sat two lit candles on it, one on each side, each sitting in ice candle holders. In between them sat a box of pizza.

"Aren't you supposed to be in the Danger Room with Kitty?" she asked. Bobby rarely missed a practice session for anything. He knew the other X-Men still looked down at him and Kitty, saw them just as kids, and he was always working to improve, to earn their approval.

Just like Rogue would be doing if she were still a mutant.

But Bobby just smiled. "I asked Kitty if it would be okay to cancel tonight. Told her I wanted to spend this night with my girlfriend."

* * *

Kitty sat on a bench in the courtyard near the fountain. She could see the flickering of candlelight in Rogue's window. "You are a good friend, Kitty Pryde," she said to herself. She sighed and pulled out her iPod, and was about to put on an audiobook when Mindee Cuckoo sat down beside her.

"They're about two minutes from going at it like bunnies up there," she said. "Luckily Rogue's thought to get some condoms from the infirmary; Bobby as usual is completely unprepared." At Kitty's shocked look, she added, "I'm not eavesdropping. Their hormones are pumping so hard my shields can't block out all that passion."

"Still, why do you insist on saying things I can never unhear?" Kitty asked. "I really don't need to know that much about my friends' sex lives."

Mindee shrugged. "Just sharing the misery." After a while she added, "People are so stupid."

"Bobby, you mean?"

"Both of them. Bobby especially, but Rogue too, thinking that if she could just touch him he'd stop being interested in any other girls. So much miscommunication. You know, it's a wonder that the human race survived a hundred thousand years with just words and gestures."

Kitty nodded. "I guess it must seem that way to a telepath."

Mindee smiled. "For instance," she said, and projected into Kitty's mind a particularly vivid suggestion.

Kitty grinned back. "My room or yours?"  



End file.
